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First 26 Pages of Neal Stephenson's New Novel "Seveneves" Online
An anonymous reader writes Neal Stephenson has just released a teaser comprising the first 26 pages of his new novel Seveneves. The first words? "The moon blew up without warning and for no apparent reason."
That's no moon. It's a space station!
You can't handle the truth.
So, just like Robert A. Heinlein then?
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
"The moon blew up without warning and for no apparent reason." sounds a lot like a sci-fi version of "It was a dark and stormy night."
We know the reason -- because Khloe wanted her ass to look like Kim's.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
So what does Chairface Chippendale think of this turn of events?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minor_characters_in_The_Tick#Supervillains
The stories i mostly enjoyed, but his sex scenes would bring the human race to an end if young people read them
Is Cryptonomicon popularly viewed as not being very good? I enjoyed it, not as much as Snow Crash, but what the hell can compare with that?
Neil's works are hit and miss for me. I loved Cryptonomicon and Reamde was pretty good. I'm not into fantasy, so some of his books don't appeal at all to me. I'll get this one on Audible.
After that shitfest you can't pay me to read anything by Stephenson ever again.
Most people I know who finished it enjoyed it, but I also know plenty of people who couldn't finish it (which I understand-- the pages describing the broken tooth on Turing's bicycle as a metaphor for a substitution cypher were torturous. And tortuous.).
I mean, it's not high literature that scholars will be analyzing to death two hundred years from now, but Stephenson's books are generally creative and fun, and I enjoy them. OP's mom was probably at least half troll.
Authors improve with age? In my experience that's not true at all. There seems to be a range during which authors are at their optimum and even if the actual age range varies from person to person. The consistency is how the decline manifests itself.
Too many authors shift from storytelling to exposition in their later years. Instead of describing a compelling narrative into which thought provoking concepts are intertwined they get totally fixated on those themes. So you get a book full of exposition in which virtually nothing happens until the very end; it's a book full of people talking instead of doing. It seems exacerbated by sticking to the same universe but I've seen it happen with unrelated novels by the same author.
I always bring up Frank Herbert and the Dune series as a case study for this phenomenon. It's not that there aren't facets of the later books that aren't interesting, but as a novel those later novels are not as engaging as the first, even when they had the potential to be so much more. And it seems that first novel is usually the best.
Authors improve with age?
Some do. For example, in many years time, Stephenie Meyer will be dead.
I'm in the middle of it at the moment. It's not high art or anything but it is a terrifically exciting read. It's the kind of page turner Dan Brown might write were he both technically and narratively competent.
I had a dream, bright and carefree, but now there's doubt and gravity
What have YOU written that was any good at all, let alone worthy of being published and marketed at major brick-and-mortar booksellers? You speak boldly for someone who isn't even willing to sign their own name to a shitpost they're making on Slashdot. I stand utterly amazed that you can even use correct capitalization, punctuation, spelling, and sentence structure, while at the same time finding nothing of relevance or value in your ill-considered 'opinion'. Perhaps his works are just beyond your comprehension? Maybe Dr. Seuss would be more your speed. No, I take that back; probably still too sophisticated for you. The slogans on coasters at your local dive bar are probably more appealing to you, as are the graffitti on the mens' room wall. But please, continue to grace us with your wisdom.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Loved Snow Crash, liked Crypto and Reamde, but the Baroque Cycle was a bit too dense for me, and I bought Anathema without ever opening it. I hadn't planned on getting into Seveneves unless the reviews were glowing, but the first 26 pages were a quick and compelling tease, enough to sell me. I'll get this on Audible, too. Smart move, making the first hit free, Neal!
I've been listening to anathem on audible during my commute. I'm about halfway through and so far I'd put it up there with Snow Crash and Diamond Age (though I don't recommend it if you're not the sort of person who can intuitively guess the approximate meaning of a new word).
That's not how you do online marketing. Try this:
The first 26 pages of Neal Stephenson's new bestseller were *leaked* to the internet!
That's work much better...
In my opinion the tangents were what made the books awesome. I particularly loved Tourings bike chain timing in Cryptonomicon, followed closely by relating the crew served machine gun to sawmill machinery. The bit where they come up with a complex algorithm to divvy up inherited goods on a 2d graph and use time on a supercomputer to calculate who gets what was also pretty good, though not technically a tangent.
I'm on my fourth reading of the Baroque cycle. It's a fantastic read if you're the kind of reader that can keep two dozen characters clear in your head.
He does get loquacious in the details but as a true geek he understands that the details are important.
I don't think Cryptonomicon's ending was bad, I think it was missing. "I sorry Neal, we're just going to stop adding paragraphs once the book hits 1000 pages."
Neal had said in interviews that there were supposed to be three interconnected storie lines, not the two that made it. The third stoyline was to be in the future dealing with the effects of the first two, that's where the ending would have been.
5 pages and he didn't once mention a whistle.
Revolution is the opium of the intellectuals.
Part of the game with novels is to put something intriguing in the first paragraph, preferably the first sentence. Something that will make a browser at the airport bookstore want to read more, if just to figure out how that's even possible. Something like, "Being dead turned out to have its advantages".
I kind of make a game of reading novel first lines. IMHO, starting off with an exploding moon make this one of the better ones I've seen.
I did get a Heinlein-ish feel from the first part of the preview, mostly from the Delilah and the Space Rigger era of Heinlein's work.
The thing that Stephenson does, which Heinlein never really tried to do, is set a bunch of smaller stories reeling about and, like a pile of icbms, cruise missiles and long range bombers, bring them all together at the final targeted story point
Maybe I am a pathetic doofus, but I really do enjoy Stephenson's work
Wherever You Go, There You Are